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Refugees who are more willing to take risks, who tend to reciprocate friendliness, and who are more strongly convinced than others are that they are in control of their lives integrate into society faster. This is the result of a study undertaken on the basis of the “IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees in Germany” which researchers from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the German Institute of Economic Research (DIW) devised in conjunction with researchers from the University of the Saarland and the University of Münster. The study was published recently in the “Collabra: Psychology” journal.

Twenty years after the introduction of the euro, this Weekly Report uses an empirical analysis to assess the performance of monetary policy in the EMU founding states. It is often claimed that the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB) cannot outperform its national predecessors, as the euro area countries experience different business cycles yet share a common interest rate. However, the present analysis shows that the ECB’s common monetary policy has been more adept at stabilizing the economy than most of its national predecessors from the perspective of the member states. With a common currency, European monetary policy has also become largely independent of exchange rates. However, the central bank is unable to counter long-term macroeconomic imbalances. To protect euro area countries from crises more effectively, priority should be given to reforming the monetary union and fiscal policy as well as to completing the Banking Union and the Capital Markets Union. Mistakes in crisis management must be openly discussed in order to address the temptation some have to renationalize economic and monetary policy; the ECB’s monetary policy should not be a scapegoat.

Improving physicians’ prescription practices is a primary strategy for countering the rise in resistance to antibiotics. This would prevent physicians from incorrectly prescribing antibiotics, one of the main causes of antibiotic resistance. The increasing availability of medical data and methods of machine learning provide an opportunity to generate instant diagnoses. In the present study, the example of urinary tract infections in Denmark is used to demonstrate how data-based predictions can improve clinical practice in the face of increasing antibiotic resistance. For this purpose, comprehensive administrative and medical data, in combination with machine learning methods and economic modeling, were used to develop rules for prescribing antibiotics. The total number of prescriptions could be reduced by 7.42 percent by applying the recommended policy measures without reducing the number of treated bacterial infections. This demonstrates the great potential of this method. However, in Germany this potential cannot be tapped until more information is digitized. The information that must be supplied to the IT systems in physicians’ practices and hospitals is often collected and saved by decentralized institutions; linking it is key.

Growth and progress towards equal living conditions across the European Union continues, but the crises of recent years have shown that Europe needs reforms. In light of the European elections at the end of May, around 20 economists at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) examined what these reforms could look like. More competitiveness and convergence could be achieved through a “Pact for Innovation,” more stringent merger control, and industrial support targeted towards specific goals. New fiscal regulations, a stabilization fund, and regulatory harmonization would make Europe more stable and social. Member states must also present a united front to effectively face global challenges such as migration, environmental protection, and climate change.

Representative survey results have shown a stable approval rate for implementing unconditional basic income of between 45 and 52 percent in Germany since 2016/17. In European comparison, this approval rate is low. Younger, better educated persons, and those at risk of poverty support the concept of unconditional basic income in Germany. But these demographics are not the only factors that correlate with attitudes toward unconditional basic income: subjective justice attitudes do as well. The justice norm of equity and unconditional basic income appear to be contradictory. On the other hand, people who find that there are deficits in covering the needs of society’s lower income groups tend to approve of unconditional basic income. Therefore, analyses show that attitudes toward unconditional basic income follow specific patterns and social regularities; and they were relatively stable between 2016 and 2018. As long as uncertainty predominates regarding the social costs and benefits of implementing such a basic income, the relatively high proportion of those in favor must be interpreted with care. It does not indicate that society is actually ready for reforms in this direction.

Stefan Liebig conducts research on social inequality and social structure analysis with a focus on attitudes towards social justice. He has been Director of the SOEP at DIW Berlin since early 2018. He is a member of the German Data Forum (RatSWD) and Deputy Chair of the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII). Liebig previously held a professorship at the University of Bielefeld.

Germany’s leading economics research institutes have revised their forecasts for economic growth in 2019 signifi­cantly downward. They expect Germany’s gross domestic product to increase by 0.8%. This is more than one percentage point less than in autumn 2018, when the forecast was still for 1.9% growth. In contrast, the institutes confirm their previous forecast for the year 2020: gross domestic product is expected to increase by 1.8%. These are the results of the Joint Economic Forecast for spring 2019, which will be presented in Berlin on Thursday.

The total number of dependent employees in Germany has increased by more than four million since the financial crisis. Part of this growth took place in the low-wage sector. Analyses based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel, which in 2017 for the first time include detailed information on secondary employment, show that there were around nine million low-wage employment contracts in Germany that year, around one quarter of all contracts. Women, young adults and employees in Eastern Germany are particularly likely to receive low wages. The legal minimum wage introduced in 2015 is below the low-wage threshold, and thus did not decrease the proportion of low-wage employees, although wages at the bottom-end of the distribution did markedly increase. Wage mobility has hardly changed since the mid-1990s: almost two thirds of employees in the lowest wage category were still there three years later. In order to curtail the low-wage sector, a better and broader qualification of workers, as well as a more proactive wage policy are called for. A reform of the mini-job rules would also be helpful.

The ecological tax reform that Germany implemented between 1999 and 2003 increased energy tax rates—especially on gasoline and diesel. Today, the ecological tax hikes yield an annual revenue of around 20 billion euros or 0.6 percent of GDP. The money is used to finance a higher federal grant to the public pension scheme. Calculations based on a pension simulation model show that the contribution rate to the statutory pension fund is currently 1.2 percentage points lower and pensions 1.5 percent higher than they would be without the currently higher federal subsidies. A microsimulation analysis found that overall, the ecological tax reform is neutral with regard to revenue and burden. For various income groups and social groups, there are certain levels of burden and relief. For example, the reform relieves middle-income households of employees and retired persons who benefit from the public pension scheme. Households with low incomes are actually burdened, as are commuters with long commutes. These distribution effects should be taken into account in a further development of ecological taxes.

Paid and unpaid work are still distributed very unequally between men and women in Germany. Regardless of time restrictions imposed by gainful employment, there is a gender- specific gap in time spent on housework and child care (gender care gap). The total volume of paid and unpaid work on weekdays is roughly the same for men and women (approx. 11 hours), although women perform more unpaid and men more paid work. Also on Sundays, women spend an average of 1.5 hours more on unpaid work, even though almost no gainful work is done—neither by women nor men. In households with children—especially, young children—the gender care gap is particularly wide. Since the unequal distribution of paid and unpaid work negatively affects the financial situation of women, policy measures which support women’s participation in the labor market and encourage men’s participation in housework and child care are important. An example of the latter would be the extension of partner months for the parental
leave benefit.

The gender pay gap of 21 percent in Germany is partly due to the fact that men and women work in different occupations. However, considerable pay gaps between men and women can also be observed within occupations, although the gap is not constant across occupations. In particular, there is a substantial gender pay gap in occupations with non-linear earnings, i.e. earnings increase non-linearly with the number of hours worked. Additionally, occupations which have a high share of leadership positions exhibit a larger gender pay gap. Occupations at public companies tend to have smaller pay gaps. Changes in the organization of work that allow more flexible working hours and top-sharing (dividing a management position into two part-time positions) could help reducing the gender pay gap. Moreover, collective agreements, which usually apply to public sector employers, could also lead to a reduction in the pay gap.